Editing National Institutes of Health (section)

====Grant to EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan Institute for studying bat coronaviruses====
{{See also|COVID-19 lab leak theory|Investigations into the origin of COVID-19|}}
Following the outbreak of the [[COVID-19 pandemic]], the NIH-funded [[EcoHealth Alliance]] has been the subject of controversy and increased scrutiny due to its ties to the [[Wuhan Institute of Virology]] (WIV)—which has been at the center of speculation since early 2020 that SARS-CoV-2 may have escaped in a lab incident.<ref>{{cite magazine |title=In Major Shift, NIH Admits Funding Risky Virus Research in Wuhan |url=https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/nih-admits-funding-risky-virus-research-in-wuhan |magazine=[[Vanity Fair (magazine)|Vanity Fair]] |date=22 October 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |first=Jocelyn |last=Kaiser |title=NIH says grantee failed to report experiment in Wuhan that created a bat virus that made mice sicker |url=https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-says-grantee-failed-report-experiment-wuhan-created-bat-virus-made-mice-sicker |work=Science |date=October 21, 2021 |access-date=February 5, 2025}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Fauci stands by gain-of-function research denials, defends collaboration with Wuhan lab |url=https://denvergazette.com/news/fauci-stands-by-gain-of-function-research-denials-defends-collaboration-with-wuhan-lab/article_8ba272e2-2940-532c-9820-4b015465a246.html |newspaper=The Denver Gazette |date=October 24, 2021}}</ref> Between 2014 and 2019, NIH awarded approximately $3.7 million in grant funding to EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit organization focused on global health and infectious disease research. A portion of this funding, around $600,000, was subcontracted to WIV in China as part of a project titled "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence."{{cn|date=March 2025}} The project aimed to study bat coronaviruses and assess their potential to infect humans. The research at WIV included the creation of [[chimeric viruses]], which combined genetic material from different bat coronaviruses to evaluate their ability to infect human cells.{{cn|date=March 2025}} In documents released in 2021, including NIH correspondence with Congress, it was disclosed that one of these modified viruses resulted in an "unexpected outcome," where the virus became more infectious in humanized mice.{{cn|date=March 2025}} The NIH maintained that this outcome was not the intended goal of the research and did not violate the terms of the grant, though critics raised concerns about potential gain-of-function research. Under political pressure, the NIH withdrew funding to EcoHealth Alliance in July 2020.<ref>{{cite news |title=NIH Presses U.S. Nonprofit for Information on Wuhan Virology Lab |url= https://www.wsj.com/articles/nih-presses-u-s-nonprofit-for-information-on-wuhan-virology-lab-11597829400 |access-date=6 June 2021 |newspaper=[[The Wall Street Journal]]}}</ref> In 2023, HHS barred WIV from receiving U.S. government funding for a decade, citing non-compliance with safety and reporting standards.{{cn|date=March 2025}}